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Tag: C.S. Lewis

I still remember sitting around the lunch table in Martine’s with a bunch of businesspeople, lawyers, and family as we celebrated my dad’s 59th birthday. The conversation was lighthearted and cheery as the group laughed together, reminiscing of times past and looking forward to the times to come.

Then the conversation got political. One of the people sitting around the table sabotaged the camaraderie with a jab against Republicans, and it wasn’t long before the rest of the group joined in. Having been raised in a liberal family, I was used to this, but aided by the training I’ve received at Fuller Theological Seminary, this was the first time I was able to actually be just a fly on the wall, observing the people around me and reflecting on what I was seeing.

In late 2014, British actress and the Global Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women, Emma Watson, delivered a speech as part of the launch of the UN’s He for She campaign—a campaign that, according to Watson, has at its core an attempt to redeem the word feminist. In the many months since Emma delivered the speech, I’ve found myself wondering if I am a feminist. For those of you who know me, you know that the Bible is an important part of my life. It molds and shapes my worldview. So, in the wake of Emma’s speech, I found myself asking whether the ideals espoused by the He for She campaign are something I can embrace, or whether I must reject them.

It would not be until late 2015, over a year after Emma delivered her speech, that I finally found resolve to my questioning, through a final paper I put together as part of my Christian ethics class at Fuller Theological Seminary. In the coming weeks, I will to invite you (for better or worse) into the inner musings of my mind and the thoughts spurred by the process of writing this paper, but for now, I’m going to start by articulating why I am most certainly not a secular feminist.